A SENSE OF SCENE: DEPICTIONS OF SCENE AS EXPRESSIONS OF FEELING IN CHINESE AND ENGLISH POETRY

This study compares depictions of scene as means of expressing feeling in Chinese and English poetry. While both traditions turn to outer reality as a point of reference for the expression of feeling, differences in the ways that Chinese poets and English poets relate outer reality to inner feeling can be identified. Three major modes of presentation are explored: (1) the contextual, in which outer reality and inner feeling are separately juxtaposed; (2) the textual, in which outer reality and inner feeling are lexically conflated; and (3) the immanent, which is posited on the premise that a depiction of scene is at the same time an expression of feeling. One finds the contextual mode occurs normatively in Chinese, less often in English poetry; the textual is encountered in both Chinese and English; the immanent mode characterizes some traditional Chinese poems and a few modern English poets.;A key concept in this analysis is the notion of ch'ing(' ) "inner feeling", and ching (' )"outer reality." The Chinese poetstend to perceive an innate metaphoric relationship between ch'ing and ching, whereas English poets are inclined to specify the correlation between outer reality and inner feeling.;To illustrate the "contextual" mode, poems have been chosen from the Book of Songs, Li Po, Tu Fu, Fan Chung-yen, Ch'en Yu-yi in the Chinese tradition and from Wordsworth, Tennyson, Browning, Housman in the English tradition; poems from the Book of Songs, Tu Fu, Li Shang-yin, Ch'in Kuan and from Spenser, Sidney, Shakespeare, Donne, and Eliot to illuminate the "textual" mode; and poems from the Songs of Ch'u, T'ao Yuan-ming, Wang Wei, Su Shih and from James Stephens, Robert Frost serve as paradigms for the "immanent" mode.